Gone
by Misha
Summary: Five things that could have happened if Lilly Kane had been kidnapped instead of murdered.


Gone  
By Misha

Disclaimer- I don't own anything to do with "Veronica Mars", I really wish I did, but I don't. It belongs to Rob Thomas and the UPN/CW. I'm not making any money off of this, so please don't sue me.

Author's Notes- I started this five point challenge story a long time ago. I remember reading a long time ago that originally Lilly was supposed to have gone missing before her body was found, these are five different takes on the idea that she went missing but no body was ever found. I hope you enjoy it.

Pairings- Minor Jake/Lianne, Duncan/Veronica, Logan/Lilly

Summery- Five things that could have happened if Lilly Kane had been kidnapped instead of murdered.

Spoilers- The first season.

Rating- PG-13

* * *

I. Forsaken

Duncan could never sleep through the night. No, he always ended up waking up after yet another nightmare and finding himself in Lilly's room.

He'd sit there surrounded by sister's things and for the millionth time, he'd ask himself 'why'? Why had she run away and where had she gone? What had happened to Lilly? Would they ever know.

He knew she was alive and that was a blessing, after those first days, when they'd thought some sicko had taken her until the note had arrived.

_Mom, Dad, and Donut-_

_Don't worry about me. I'm alive, but I'm not telling you where I am and I'm not coming back._

_- Lilly._

It was her handwriting and it sounded like her, besides the cops discovered that she'd withdrawn money from her account that day and that she'd pawned a few items.

No, she'd done it on purpose. His sister had hated life with them so much that she'd wanted to run away and never come back. She'd been able to do that, to just walk away.

Duncan wasn't sure if he could ever forgive her that, if one day she did come back. How do you forgive someone for choosing to walk away from you without a second glance?

* * *

  
II. Lost

Sometimes Celeste slept in Lilly's room. There, surrounded by the things Lilly loved, hope didn't such a difficult thing to have. There it was easy to believe that they would find her daughter, alive and well, and not just someday come across her body.

Sometimes, Celeste thought it would be easier if Lilly had just died that day. Then they could have mourned and moved on. Instead, they were trapped in a permanent limbo, not sure whether to hold out hope, or to grieve and let go.

Celeste was sure there was nothing worse than not knowing. Not knowing if your child was dead or alive, or having any clue what had happened to her.

It was like living your entire life in limbo. You don't know whether to grieve and move on or to keep clinging and hoping. Celeste just wants answers, wants to know what happened to her daughter a year before.

She wonders if this is her punishment for not being the perfect mother, this agonising Hell. After all, she and Lilly had a difficult relationship and there were times she almost hated her daughter, so maybe this is her punishment.

She doesn't know. She doesn't know anything anymore, except that she'd give anything to have Lilly in her home pulling off some outrageous stunt. Yes, the only thing she knows is that she misses her daughter and wants her back.

* * *

  
III. Illusion  
It should have been good news, the phone call from Duncan saying that they had found Lilly. That she was alive. Should have been. Except, there also came the news that she had escaped her captor eighteen months earlier, after only five months. 

For a year and a half, Lilly had been free and had just chosen to stay away. Even now, it was only a fluke that they discovered that she was alive. Someone had spotted her at a night-club in Rome and thought she bore a striking resemblance to the missing Lilly Kane and snapped a photo and that was it. Lilly's self-imposed exile was at an end.

Logan didn't know how to feel. On one hand, he was so happy that she was alive, that his exile was at an end. And yet... She hadn't wanted to come home, she hadn't cared about the destruction she had left her in path, she had only thought about herself. Same old Lilly.

He knew he couldn't see her, not without saying ugly things and this was not time for that. So he was going to stay in his own exile, stay at the bottom of a bottle booze, still mourning for a woman who didn't deserve his love. A woman who hadn't disappeared, but who had simply never existed at all.

* * *

  
IV. Changed

It took a year for the police to find Lilly.

A year of sleepless nights and bitter recriminations. A year in which two marriages had fallen apart, neither able to survive the fact that on the night Lilly Kane died her father was making love to a woman who was not his wife.

Celeste filed for divorce right away, Keith Mars followed suit a month later. The result was two devastated children who couldn't even bear to look at each other, though a blood test determined that they weren't brother and sister, but...

The damage had already been done. Jake knew they both hated him and he couldn't blame them.

This was the world his daughter was coming back to, a world of lies and destruction.

It had only been a year, but that year might as well have been a lifetime.

The final irony was the Keith Mars was the one to bring Lilly back to Jake. It just proved that Keith Mars was the better man, but then Jake had already known that.

Jake's reunion with Lilly wasn't pleasant, she was different after her ordeal, angry and bitter, and it was made worse by the wreckage of the life she had left behind. She blamed him, just like Duncan and Veronica, which didn't surprise Jake, after all, maybe it was his fault, maybe this destruction was just what he deserved.

All he knew was, whatever happened to him, at least one prayer had been answer.

* * *

  
V. Return  
  
The phone rang and Veronica picked it up, sorting through a pile of bills as she did so. "Hello?" 

"Veronica?"

"Duncan?" She asked in disbelief. He had been the last person she had expected to hear from. She hadn't talked to him since she'd left Neptune two years before, but even then, they hadn't really talked. Not since Lilly.

"Veronica, they found her." Duncan told her.

"What?" Veronica asked, not sure what he meant.

"They found Lilly." He told her. "She's alive."

Veronica dropped her mail and just stood there, tears streaming down her cheeks. Lilly was _alive_. After five years she had all but given up hope, yet the miracle had somehow happened. "How? When?"

"Why don't you come home and find out?" Duncan told her. "She's coming home tomorrow, we're going to meet her. She'll want you there."

Veronica stood there. Neptune hadn't been _home _in a long time, five years, really. Besides, she had commitments. School, a job, friends, a boyfriend. Could she really just leave like that?The answer, was _yes_.

What else could it be? This was Lilly. She was alive. Veronica thought suddenly of the girl she had been five years before, the girl who had died the day Lilly disappeared.

Suddenly, for the first time in five years, she remembered what it was like to be that girl. The memories had faded and were as bitter as they were sweet, but suddenly they were vivid again.

She touched the necklace at her throat, the _best_ charm that Lilly had given her, that matched the _friends _one that Lilly herself always wore. Veronica hadn't taken it off in five years and now it seemed like a beacon of hope.

The last five years seemed like a nightmare that she was finally waking up from. After all, Lilly was alive. Miracles did happen, after all.

"Sure," she answered. "I'll come home."

- Fin


End file.
